Short and long-form online video advertising continues to grow and evolve

Posted on
Mar 4, 2014 by
YuMe

As more people around the world transition from traditional television watching to viewing content online, many companies have adjusted their marketing and advertising strategies to keep pace with this switch in consumer behavior. As such, Internet ad sales reached $40 billion in 2013 according to USA Today.

The Newspaper reveals a closer look at the marketplace which shows that Internet video advertising is actually being split into two separate markets: short-form videos and long-form content.

Programmatic ad buying is associated with short-form content, which is defined as video clips that are up to five minutes in length. These are among the least expensive online advertising videos. Costs are kept low because software is used to buy the ads, thus removing the human element from the buying and selling process, and making the system itself more efficient. Content of this kind accounted for a 22 percent year-over-year growth in terms of views, according to FreeWheel's "Video Monetization Report."

"There's pressure on all channels to go programmatic, even though it's still a small piece of the overall digital ad marketplace," Bill Wise, director and CEO of Mediaocean, told USA Today.

However, long-form content ads attached to live television events and movies are still traditional business-to-business transactions negotiated by people. These saw an 86 percent viewership growth between Q4 2012 and the last quarter of 2013.

The biggest contributing factor to the growth of online video advertising – whether short-form or long-form – appears to be connected to an increase in mobile device usage, but more specifically, tablets.

"The tablet has become a mini-TV set," Doug Knopper, co-founder and co-CEO of FreeWheel TV, told USA Today in a separate article.

Freewheel noted that online video ads viewed on tablets tripled in Q4 2013 and appear to be growing 10 times faster than advertisements created for desktop PCs.